Field Notes

By Michael Fields

January 2001

Any picture of Roadside Theater must begin with the place in which it is based and the community that anchors and partners its work. They are intrinsically bound together and ground the artistic work, literally in the soil of this region. The rural, central Appalachian mountain region of eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia is the home of this company. It would be an oversimplification to say that this region is "economically depressed." In many ways, this community has had 100 years of economic exploitation, attempted cultural suppression and geographic isolation. This region of America has been treated as a third-world economy and has experienced the resulting cycles of deep-seated poverty, the flight of the young, the comprehensive devaluing of indigenous cultural expression and the ownership of the land by absentee landlords, who in most cases are transnational corporations. Unemployment ranges from 30 to 65 percent in the region. One-third of the region’s population lives below the poverty line. U.S. government studies indicate a pervasive pattern of substandard health care and severe environmental damage. It is in this context that the work of Roadside Theater is done.

Roadside Theater, Pregones Theater, and Junebug Productions performing in Promise of a Love Song. Photo credit: Jose Garcia [image gallery]

Founded in 1975, Roadside Theater in their own words is, "Made from the history and cultural traditions of this place, by ensemble members who grew up and remain in this place, and all of the company’s work is created and performed in partnership with the people of its place." This has led to multiple collaborations, both within the community and with such groups as the Zuni Native American community of New Mexico, Junebug Productions of New Orleans and Pregones Theater of New York City, who share a common ground with Roadside. Artistically, the group works with stories and song as principal components of their artistic work. They also design as part of their performance work, extensive residency activities that seek to "build authentic community partnerships based on equity, inclusion and self interest." Roadside has toured extensively regionally, nationally and internationally. When they tour, their focus is also on training within the community so that each community can carry on this work if they wish. New works are constantly in creation. The current focus of the company includes more work in community partnerships and documenting the company’s methodology in this regard.

Structurally, Roadside is small by design. There are seven members in the ensemble. The leadership group includes Dudley Cocke, director; Donna Porterfield, managing director; and Ron Short, playwright, composer, performer. Principle artistic and managerial decisions are made by the core leadership of the ensemble. This is done in monthly meetings. Decisions are made either by consensus or majority vote. Each member of the full ensemble has both artistic and managerial responsibilities. Planning is done and reevaluated on an annual basis. The core ensemble has worked together for over 20 years. Everyone is paid a full-time salary. The company’s annual budget is approximately $400,000.

Roadside Theater is a part of Appalshop Inc., which is committed to creation and presentation of public programming in media and the performing arts that combines a compelling vision of positive social change with high artistic standards. Appalshop’s programs seek to provide the opportunity for people to celebrate and explore common bonds, debate their differences and lay the civic foundation to pursue solutions to their problems. Roadside is governed by the Appalshop board of directors. Currently, the managing director of Roadside has a seat on the Appalshop Program Council, which sets long-range plans and tracks progress of the various programs of the organization. Roadside pays 22 percent of all its expenses to cover overhead and core administrative expenses, including bookkeeping, financial management and some fundraising support. Appalshop owns two building in Whitesburg, Kentucky, that include office space, warehouse, 150-seat theater, gallery and film/video editing suites. Whitesburg has a population of approximately 2,800. Roadside has an office in the Appalshop complex in Whitesburg, as well as a small office in Norton, Virginia (about a 45 minute drive apart). Most of the core members of Roadside live in Norton.

Financially, it should be noted that budget cuts and restructuring of the National Endowment for the Arts away from folk arts and toward larger institutions and project funding have negatively affected the organization, as has a decrease of touring possibilities for theater on a national basis, especially original theater such as the kind Roadside creates and performs. Nontraditional theater companies in particular have been hit hard by this trend in national funding. Still, the organization shows no deficit and has managed to secure some foundation support for its work.

There is one handful of rural professional theater companies in the United States. Roadside’s methodology and idea of the matrix of grassroots theater principles is succinctly expressed in a book titled "From the Ground Up" (co-written by Dudley Cocke of Roadside). Three principles of the grassroots-theater matrix are repeated by the group as core to their work:

1. The theater has its roots in the soil of this place and as such often gives a voice to those with no voice.
2. It is accessible to everyone by design and aesthetic.
3. Form, content, audience and place are inexorably linked from conception.

The idea of exploration and glorification of "cultural identity" is central to the group’s identity. And they seek to find the resonance of that idea within each community where they work. And the question they leave each audience/community with in the residencies and the performance is, "What are you going to do with it?"

Personal Reflections

I was reading the New York Times Book Review section on the way home from this visit with Roadside Theater. This line struck me, in relationship to what I had just observed at Roadside: "Fiction, at its best, is a radical act of intimacy. It seeks to join, to merge, to know deeply; and, as with intimacy, there is a way in which it cannot be faked. As readers, we sense when the game is being played for real and when something else is afoot." (from a review by Stacey D’Erasmo of "Everyday People" by Stewart O’Nan - 2/25/01). Substitute "theater " for "fiction" and "audience/community" for "readers" and this sentence encapsulates my experience at Roadside.

At Roadside the game is for real. And there is an intimacy of place, of culture, of identification, of struggle against the status quo that is oftimes astonishing in its breadth, intensity, longevity and rootedness. One cannot separate "place" from these people and this work. And one cannot make a false division between the work and the act of living in a community. They certainly do not. That is a chimera that does not exist at Roadside. There it is one and the same. And the theater also then becomes a model of community in practice. Ron Short asks what holds a community together in times of struggle? It is telling the stories that must be told and coming to truth (not "the" truth but "a" truth) through the particular. It is discovering what we have in common. And that is what they do: tell stories. Stories that spring from the place and the founding issue of the company, which is one of cultural identity. They seek to find what brings people together. They seek to give voice to those who never get a chance to speak, who live outside the boundaries of "popular" culture. As Ron stated, "Theater is the last public forum for common people." And you always need to begin where the people are.

Donna Porterfield in one of the interviews exclaimed, "When you’ve been doing something for 25 years, if you haven’t learned a little bit, somebody should just shoot you." It is clear this group has learned. As Dudley Cocke put it [quoting Bernice Reagon], when you go into a situation, you either gain territory or lose territory. Anyway you cut it, it’s a tremendous struggle, says Cocke. There is not a level playing field in this country for this work. They have tried to get smarter about struggling, because the prospect of not facing a struggle at this point seems very dim, he says.

The Roadside artists continually vocalize acknowledgement and understanding of those who came before them on this path. The WPA artists being one example. When they contacted those folks, the response was, "We’ve been waiting. We thought that you had forgotten." Roadside has a clear sense that because they did what they did, and have tried to document it as they have, and told it with their own voice, it will be there when those special folks who wish to carry on this path come looking. As Short stated, "If you don’t tell your own story how you ever going to know who you are?"

Corn Mountain/Pine Mountain, a bilingual, musical play created and performed by Idiwanan An Chawe of Zuni, New Mexico and Roadside Theater of Whitesburg, Kentucky. Photo: Tim Cox [image gallery]

Roadside also avowedly takes the "long view." As Ron said, no matter how bad the moment, you have to take the long view. "It is sort of hard to figure out how you are going to drain the swamp when you are up to your ass in alligators." In one of their many collaborations with communities of affinity, this one with the Zuni, they speak often about the integration of life and work. The task for the Zuni is to integrate all of the elements of life together as best one can. We had a long discussion about how folks segregate their lives. There is work, then weekend, then retirement, each in its own compartment, each with its own persona. And part of this discussion comes from my own interest in the paths ensembles take as they get older. Ron then told a story of Zuni priest. I will briefly paraphrase it here. There was a Zuni "sun" priest who was charged with praying up the sun each morning. At one point some anthropologists came and asked him what did he think would happen if he stopped. He replied, "Why would I want to do that?" As Roadside moves into middle age and beyond, there is no sense that any of the core members has lost any vitality; quite the reverse. Folks feel as if they, after years of work, have reached the point, where vitality now starts to match craft and experience to make this time in the work the most vital. As Ron put it, "I have grown up. My life, so personally, I cannot believe how far it’s gone. When I look at the full scope of my history, how I was brought up, all the influences that were around me – I can’t even imagine. I can’t even begin to imagine that I could be here talking. … Now, the work that we do may be hard, but it’s not diminishing." He quotes Highlander’s Myles Horton at 85: "Take only one thing in your life and believe in it all your life and you will have a life." So, to the question of stopping or slowing down or letting go, the answer is simple: "I’m like the priest, why would I stop?"

Oh, there are difficulties. There will always be difficulties. As Dudley pointed out, "Respect in our culture is tied to economics and that is hard at this age. I’m loosing patience with it." It is interesting to note that all of the members of the core of Roadside came to the work through politics before coming to theater. That has deeply affected both their aesthetic and their working methods. They talk of "popular culture" as a de-humanizing and oversimplifying the complexity inherent in life as well as the uniqueness of the culture. That is why the work is so often described as "personal". And I find watching their work – that there is tremendous complexity in the what could be described as the simplicity of the theatrical style. That is deceptive. Because the work, if looked at through the proper lenses is very experimental.

I have a strong affinity for this these people and this work, even though the work I do takes a very different style and form. I think we share three primary values –

1. A belief that what we do and where we do it has true meaning both to us and the communities that we are part of. We believe in being a part of not separate from.
2. We share a struggle to be essentially different – because to be the "counter-culture" is what is necessary in these times
3. We share a way of working that puts power in the hands of the artists – and in the hands of the community through the work.

Now this is not to say that that we don’t have a sense of humor about the whole thing. You gotta be able to also laugh about it. And laugh we did. And we swapped a lot of tour stories as groups such as ours will do. And we talked craft. And we talked past (Vietnam had a strong effect and resonance for us all). And therein lies the next investigation. Now that we have all of this documentation down – we should next record what we choose to talk about "off the record". Where the work lives. Here is a short list of some of the things we covered when the tape recorder was off. Road stories including, Alabama prison show pranks; Swedes and alcohol; Danes and beer; Vietnam; the fact that everyone should have to do some national service; why some folks can work in an ensemble and others can't; musical practice — physical practice; grants and why we don't get them (threatening); more respect and why we don't get that (too strange and need more money); school systems; the necessity of collective action; back to road stories — Swedes and telegrams; more road stories — a beautiful Brazilian woman in red and salsa music; the need for more reflective time in our work." This was all over a meal, which is where most good conversations occur.

As Dudley said, "We and this work are but a speck in history". But there is something so essential, so vital and so important to this speck and those like it around this world – that it must be heard. Because it is the struggle against the deadening nature of the status quo and those who wish to impose it. As Milan Kundera wrote, "It is the struggle against forgetting". In this speck the human stories come alive with those that need to hear them. And this project is the telling of those stories that are often not told – because in them is a power that disturbs those in power. It is to voice what does not have voice. It has long roots in history. And it is alive and kicking in out time. It has very evolved methods and practices. It creates powerful, entertaining art. It’s there waiting for those with the vision and the courage to practice it. Check out Roadside and find out. I did and I felt emboldened and re-charged for doing so. And this evidence would certainly support the premises outlined for investigation in the CAN Grassroots Ensemble Theater Project.

Biographies of site visitors

Michael Fields is a founding member of the Dell'Arte Company where he acts, directs, teaches, creates plays, manages all company business and oversees development. He is the producing director of the Dell’Arte Mad River Festival. He is also the director of the California State Summer School for the Arts Theatre Program and resident director with Het Vervolg Theatre of Holland. Fields has taught at the American Conservatory Theatre, the California Institute for the Arts, the Dutch National Theatre School and the Danish Dramaturgs Institute. He has directed numerous productions nationally and internationally. He received 1984 and 1986 Drama-logue awards and a 1984 S.F. Bay Area Critics Circle award. He holds a BA in Communication Arts from the University of San Francisco and an MFA in Directing from Humboldt State University. Fields is on the board of directors of the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) in New York, he is a member of the James Irvine Foundation California Arts Leadership Forum, and has served as a National Endowment for the Arts panelist.

Ann Kilkelly is a professor of theater arts and women's studies at Virginia Tech. She is recognized nationally as a scholar and performer of jazz-tap dancing and history, performance studies and interactive performance techniques. She has received Smithsonian Senior Fellowships and a National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant, and performs and gives master classes in jazz tap around the country. At Virginia Tech she served as the director of Women's Studies for six years, she teaches and directs multimedia performance concerts, and she recently created the Diversity Training Laboratory to help students and faculty use performance techniques to examine diversity issues.

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